Emergence, Varieties of Explanation, and the Generality of Laws (Part II)
| Autor: | J Schröder |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | German<br />English<br />French<br />Russian |
| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | RUDN Journal of Philosophy, Vol 0, Iss 2, Pp 35-44 (2011) |
| Druh dokumentu: | article |
| ISSN: | 2313-2302 2408-8900 |
| Popis: | The principal aim of this paper is to show that a constraint that C.D. Broad imposed on the acceptability of deductions of macroproperties which would show them to be non-emergent, viz. that they use only general laws of nature, is too strong and should be replaced by the weaker condition that the deductions be non-trivial. First, the relevant notion of generality is made more precise. I propose that a law is general iff it is applicable to a diversity of phenomena relative to what I call domain constitutive properties. In order to substantiate the claim that Broad's constraint is too strong I analyse three examples of explanations of macroproperties from robotics and the life sciences. All of them are non-trivial explanations and should thereby render the explained properties non-emergent. Finally, I briefly indicate three ways in which an explanation may be non-trivial. |
| Databáze: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
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